Backing Up cost effective plan

[Darren Roark]

[Mark Smith] “Tape drives are robust. I have a Quantum SDLT600A drive that has been gathering dust for some years and the other day I pulled it off the shelf and loaded a tape that must be 7 years old. My experience with spinning platters as archive devices has not been so terrific….”

Well said. On older drives I haven’t had LTO backups made I have to fire them up and “take them for a walk” or it risks the motor seizing.

Trusting teeny tiny record players with your data long term isn’t a great idea. LTO is what the studios use to back up DCIs and archive editorial so that’s good enough for me.

AFAIK there are other proprietary tape backup systems, but LTO is intended to be open as to not cause future compatibility issues.

The compatibility is tied to the drive’s ability to read that version of LTO, not the software that transferred the data to it.

As of now you can still buy LTO-3 drives new.

[Craig Alan]

What is PRP? The incremental backup that does not overwrite is similar to CCC incremental backup with safety net but obviously will take up more room if you can’t overwrite.

Can you delete stuff from an LTO to regain space? I could do the incremental back ups that dos not overwrite and then when all is finished delete all after a fresh back up of final version.

Mac Pro, macbook pro, Imacs (i7); Canon 5D Mark III/70D, Panasonic AG-HPX170/AG-HPX250P, Canon HV40, Sony Z7U/VX2000/PD170; FCP 6 certified; FCP X write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.

[Brett Sherman]

Let me push back a bit on LTO. There are solid reasons I use hard drives over LTO for backup.

1. Universal accessibility. If it’s on a hard drive it doesn’t take special hardware or software to read it. What are the chances the hardware and software you use will be around in 30 years? Let’s just say it’s not a probability I’d be willing to risk.
2. Speed of access. If you are continually pulling material from your archives, you will waste a lot of time with LTOs. Not to mention it makes using a MAM impossible.
3. Tapes fail too. Enough said. But the other thing to keep in mind is that if you don’t have two tape machines you are lacking necessary redundancy to access your material.
4. Software failure. Mirroring hard drives is dead simple. Recording to LTO is not. I know of cases where the tape backup software failed miserably and resulted in data loss.
5. Ease of duplication. Without the original files, it’s a time consuming matter to make a new copy of the backup.
6. Large size volumes. That’s a little different with 6TB tapes, but tapes are always lagging hard disks in size. With smaller tape sizes, it’s hard to manage your tapes since you can’t have a one-to-one backup of a hard drive. And when you spread out your backups over multiple tapes, you’ve just multiplied you risk of data loss, because one tape going down will effectively destroy your archive.

Yes we all know platter drives are volatile. And if your intention is to make a backup, stick it on the shelf and never think about it again, then LTO may be the best option. However, if you manage your disk backups and have a solid strategy, you have little to worry about.

My method is I have two hard drive backups. One kept off site at all times. Once a year I spin up all the drives (just in the off chance I didn’t access one throughout the year). After 4 to 5 years I copy my disks onto a new larger volume (this reduces the number of drives I have to keep). I currently have about 30 backup drives (60 because of duplicates). I have not lost any data yet.

Some of this is dependent on what your purpose for backup is. Prevent loss for the short-term? Long-term archiving with small likelihood of needing the material? Or long-term archiving with regular access? Is it mission critical to maintain access in 50 or more years? I’d at least consider a hybrid approach. LTO with a secondary hard drive backup.

[Mark Smith]

Sorry I took the short cut with an abbreviation. PRP= PreRollPost (see imagineproducts.com) which is software that I use for LTO back up and retrieval from LTO volumes. PRP allows for incremental back up, but since tape is linear not random access, you can’t “free up space by deleting a file as you would with a hard drive. Tape just doesn’t work that way.

[Doug Metz]

[Brett Sherman] “I’d at least consider a hybrid approach. LTO with a secondary hard drive backup.”

This is the route I chose… tapes off-site, hard drives in a cool, dry storage area on-site. I don’t typically need to re-do a previous project, but I often need to retrieve old files for new projects.

Doug Metz

Anode

[Craig Alan]

So it can do an incremental back up and take much less time than a full back up of say a FC library and will delete things that have been deleted but where the deleted data was still takes up the space on the tape? Is that it? I know on tape based camcorders you could overwrite though not particularly recommended. I though I had read that some LTOs could do overwrites?

Anyone use cloud based solutions or is this just too slow and or expensive?

Mac Pro, macbook pro, Imacs (i7); Canon 5D Mark III/70D, Panasonic AG-HPX170/AG-HPX250P, Canon HV40, Sony Z7U/VX2000/PD170; FCP 6 certified; FCP X write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.

[Darren Roark]

[Craig Alan] “Anyone use cloud based solutions or is this just too slow and or expensive?”

There are various services that vary on features and accessibility to data. Some are just designed for peace of mind that your data can be retrieved for a fee by them sending you a hard drive if a disaster strikes.

I’ve worked out of a few facilities with fantastically fast internet speeds where I could upload a half terabyte of Red footage in a couple hours. I think this is where things are headed, but it’s not practical for most video professionals.

The hybrid hard drive approach suggested by another used might be feasible with cloud backups.

[Craig Alan]

That’s what I was thinking. Use individual drives in a dock for back ups – first incremental then archive when finished. Then use cloud service for failsafe back ups just in case disaster strikes. But if cloud is too pricey then consider tape. Thing though is you have to store this stuff off site to really be safe. I would imagine tape needs to be kept in a temp controlled environment.

As of now I have maybe 20 TBs of projects sitting around and I’d guess only half of those that I really think would be important to me in the long run. Doesn’t yet seem the investment in a $5000 tape drive would be worth it. But when I start shooting 4K and longer form films then yeah. Who knows what future tech might bring. Really need a revolution in terms of storage.

Mac Pro, macbook pro, Imacs (i7); Canon 5D Mark III/70D, Panasonic AG-HPX170/AG-HPX250P, Canon HV40, Sony Z7U/VX2000/PD170; FCP 6 certified; FCP X write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.